San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

CEO Revolving Door at Tri-City Costly to Taxpayers

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Tri-City Healthcare District Chairman of the Board, Jim Dagastino, gushed last week about the appointment of the hospital’s third CEO in three years, the promotion of chief financial officer, Steven Dietlin. “Mr. Dietlin made an immediate impact on Tri-City medical center’s financial well-being as CFO when he arrived at the hospital in 2013.”

The board chairman had to keep a straight face in his praise of outgoing CEO Tim Moran for his “leadership. Moran, the San Diego Business Journal’s Most Admired CEO of 2016, lasted less than two years before being canned by Tri-City. He collected $600,00 in severance pay and a year of medical and dental coverage.

What Dagostino didn’t mention is that the CEO they fired three years ago brought Dietlin to Tri-City in early 2013. Larry Anderson needed help to fix serious problems with the hospital’s financials. Like Moran, Anderson had been named Most Admired CEO by SDBJ in 2011, apparently the kiss of death for Tri-City executives.   [Read more…]

House GOP Morality Crusaders Go After Scientists

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Having failed to find evidence of wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood insinuated by doctored videos, a House committee led by anti-abortion Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is ready to start a new campaign targeting individuals engaging in fetal tissue research.

Since July 2015, 20 states have cleared Planned Parenthood of wrongdoing or decided not to pursue the matter. Yesterday, Planned Parenthood affiliates in three states joined a federal lawsuit filed in California against the videographers, alleging fraud, illegal recording, trespassing and invasion of privacy. The videos’ makers have also been indicted in Texas.

Now the committee — called the “Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives” by the conservative representatives behind it — is seeking subpoenas to medical companies to gather the names of medical researchers, graduate students, laboratory technicians, and administrative staff.   [Read more…]

Four Men Run For Southwest Chula Vista’s District 4 …

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… Attendance Boundary Debate Still Rages, and Townhomes Replace RVs in Imperial Beach

Last year, a seven member commission created four districts in Chula Vista. Prior to that, elections for all 5 of the city council seats were determined at large. In this election cycle, three council members are not up for re-election: Mayor Mary Salas, Councilman John McCann of District 1 and Councilwoman Patricia Aguilar of District 2.

District 4, or Southwest Chula Vista, is often considered the most underserved part of the city. Four men are running for the position: Mike Diaz, Rudy Ramirez, Eduardo Reyes and Emanuel Soto. The Chula Vista Star News posted their bios. Only residents of District 4 will be able to vote for the candidates in the June 7, 2016 elections. If you are a Chula Vista resident, you can find out more about the candidates and register to vote here.   [Read more…]

The Language of Pinyon-Juniper Trees

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After two months of struggling to write anything coherent about pinyon-juniper forests, I was on the verge of giving up.

Members of the group I am campaigning with to stop pinyon-juniper deforestation began brainstorming about applying for grants to support the campaign. Many of the grants they discovered required us to demonstrate that pinyon-juniper deforestation harmed wildlife populations, poisoned water supplies, or had a tangible effect on human populations.

Thinking that I could support our grant application process with an essay, I sat down many times to write about the countless beings that call pinyon-juniper forests home. But, I never wrote anything worth reading.

It took me a long time to figure out why.   [Read more…]

Let Donald Trump Be Our Unifier

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This presidential election is America’s reckoning. What mighty love will we summon to ensure the ending of this violence, this hate?

By Eve Ensler / AlterNet

Donald Trump is not a leader or a presidential candidate. He is an outcome, a viral manifestation of a serious malignant illness. He is the mirror of our emptiness, the emptying out that has been happening to our country for a very long time.

He is an outcome of a two-party system that has consistently ignored the needs and wishes of the majority of Americans for generations.
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November Ballot Measures in Turmoil: Fifteen Bucks Per Hour and a Football Stadium

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An attempt by the City of Upland to delay a referendum overturning its ban on medical marijuana dispensaries has led to an appellate court decision challenging the presumption of a two-thirds majority being needed for tax increases in citizen-based ballot measures.

This is huge. And what seems like a good thing could end up being a nightmare, thanks to flaws in California’s initiative process. This ruling should mean a restoration of ‘majority rules’ when it comes to citizen-driven projects.

However, given the rash of special interest gaming of the electoral process, it could mean the public will be paying for projects benefiting private interests. In San Diego, that means the path to success could be a whole lot easier in the San Diego Chargers’ quest for a new stadium.   [Read more…]

Why Are Innocent People Being Killed by Terrorists?

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Many people cannot understand why radical Islamists are killing innocent people as happened in Brussels recently. What did these people ever do to them to justify their being ruthlessly terminated as they were just going about their everyday lives in a peaceful manner?

It’s not as though many innocent civilians in the Middle East have not had their lives terminated as they were simply going about their business. As many as 12 civilians were killed in December 2013 in Yemen when a US drone targeted vehicles that were part of a wedding procession going toward the groom’s village. Since 2002, drones piloted by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon have killed hundreds of people in the country, mostly members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but also dozens of civilians, including children.   [Read more…]

Study Shows Why Women Janitors and Security Guards Are At Risk

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By Debra Varnado / Capital & Main

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education are shining a light on troubling conditions they uncovered in the state’s property services industry. Their new report, Race to the Bottom: How Low‐Road Subcontracting Affects Working Conditions in California’s Property Services Industry, was released last week.

Women janitors and security guards in the industry— a rapidly growing sector of the state’s economy– are at increased risk of violence and sexual harassment, due to a combination of factors that allow the problems, as the study claims, “to occur and to remain unchecked.”   [Read more…]

Scientists Urge Feds to Continue Fracking Moratorium off CA Coast

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By Dan Bacher / Indybay

The opposition to environmentally destructive fracking in California’s marine waters is building rapidly. On March 22, over 30 prominent scientists urged the federal government to continue the moratorium on fracking in federal waters off the California coast and to prepare a comprehensive environmental impact statement for the controversial oil-industry technique.

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Historically, Liberals and the Left Have Underestimated the Right. Today, They Overestimate It.

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By Corey Robin

I’m going to float a series of vast and quick historical generalizations in order to try and get at something that is distinctive about the present moment in US politics.

Beginning in Europe in the 19th century, liberalism has been engaged in an on-again, off-again, two-front war: against the right and against the left. Against the right’s revanchism and the left’s radicalism, liberalism has held itself up as the original Third Way. It is the reasonable and moderate alternative to the extremes, offering men and women the promises and profits of a capitalist, vaguely democratic, modernity but without its revolutionary perils and reactionary mystique.   [Read more…]

Si Se Puede! Sanders Wows Diverse Crowd in San Diego

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The big news yesterday wasn’t that Senator Bernie Sanders spoke in San Diego. It was the diverse crowd of 13,000 plus people who put their lives on hold for a day to stand up for a better world.

The line to get into the San Diego Convention Center started in the wee hours of the morning. By the time the doors opened at 4pm the line stretched forever. Halls D&E were filled with the first ten thousand or so people in line, and an overflow room was opened. And then a second overflow room was opened.

It is an article of faith among some Sanders supporters that their candidate gets short changed by the media. Today we’ll examine a sampling of local mainstream coverage of yesterday’s events.   [Read more…]

America, Got Fascism?

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By Frank Gormlie / OB Rag

Okay, America – are we ready for fascism?

As the presidential campaign season degenerated into racist and xenophobic diatribes by the Republican front runner, with those images of Trump supporters pledging their loyalty to him in Hitleresque salutes, after that scene in Chicago when the Trump rally was cancelled, triggering skirmishes between Trump supporters and demonstrators, it seems everybody is forming an opinion of whether Donald Trump is a fascist, comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini, and other dictators.
  [Read more…]

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